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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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LETTER 



GENERAL BENJ. F. BUTLER, 



HOIST. E. R HOAR 



GIVES HIS OFFICIAL AND POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, WITH A 

EEPLY TO THE JUDGE'S IMPUTATIONS UPON 

THE GENERAL. 



1° 






PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 

1876. 



LETTER. 



Lowell, October, 1876. 
Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar : — 

Dear Sir, — I have read with attention and careful consideration 
the remarks reported to have been made by you at a meeting of 
persons who assembled at Young's Hotel to defeat the nomination 
of the Republican convention of the Seventh District, in order to 
re-elect the Democratic incumbent, and also your letter accepting 
its nomination with that intention ; and take leave to reply to 
some of your suggestions. 

That such was the purpose of the meeting, I rely upon your own 
reported words: "If by using my name the result shall be that 
Gen. Butler shall be defeated, and if, knowing the sentiments of 
the people of the district, it is the opinion of gentlemen that it can 
be done, I should see no objection to it." 

If there had been any purpose or hope expressed in that meet- 
ing of the election of even as uncertain and unreliable a Republi- 
can as Judge Hoar shew himself to be by his election of Mr. Tarbox 
to the present Congress, I should have felt it my duty in this crisis 
of public affairs, — of peril so imminent to good government and 
the peace of the country, — at least to have endeavored to do 
something, to make any concession, by which the honest, patriotic 
Republicans of this district could have found representation, and 
a Republican majority been secured in the House of Representa- 
tives. 

But, quoting your words again, you say: "If 3-011, gentlemen, 
consider that the best thing to do, and that you can carry on the 
fight, of which there is some reasonable prospect of success," then 
you are willing to allow your name to be used. This is conclusive 
that the movement is a mere personal " fight" upon me, and not in 
aid of the Republican party. Therefore I must accept the gage 
as it is thrown down, and meet a personal " fight" personally. 

You say that "it [the fight] simply involves my submitting for 
the next thirty days, if I choose, to the abuse of Gen. Butler's 



speeches and ' The Traveller,' and such little organs as he owns 
and can buy, to an unlimited quantit}' of personal abuse." 

Surely, Judge, I never have said any harsher things of the news- 
papers than that. You thus aver that newspapers can be bought 
for " unlimited personal abuse." I have believed and felt that for 
a long time of some newspapers, and I am glad to have the high 
authority of one intimately connected with, and so persistently 
puffed and boosted by the newspapers, for my belief. Don't be 
alarmed, Judge ; from me }-ou will receive no personal abuse, and 
I do not own a dollar in any newspaper, nor shall I buy one, 
even if otherwise inclined, now. Newspapers only make or 
mar little timid and shuffling men. You have disarmed me, for 
you say you will take no active part in the canvass. I can- 
not, therefore, meet you face to face before our neighbors ; 
and after I subscribe my name to this communication, during 
the present canvass I promise 3-ou that I shall hardly make 
a personal allusion to you, except upon some new provocation. 
I never have made an unprovoked personal assault upon any one 
in a political canvass ; or during m}- eight }'ears' service in the 
House made such personal attack, as I think all my colleagues 
will bear me witness : and I may be permitted to say at the same 
time, that, when once attacked, the attack has been repelled in 
such manner that nobody has ever repeated the experiment. 

If you had contented 3-ourself with accepting a nomination, 
against the will of the Republican organization of the district, 
making no personal onslaught upon me, no word of unkind allu- 
sion to 3"ou, or other, except to bring your better qualities before 
your wished-for constituents, would have passed my lips, as has 
been the case in all my public utterances heretofore. The personal 
relations on which we have stood, as members of the bar, of the 
same party, and neighbors in the same count}', constrained me to 
this, although I have been painfully aware of your political oppo- 
sition to me ever since you so unceremoniously left the cabinet of 
President Grant. 

You say, in j'our carefully prepared letter, written at Concord, in 
the peace and quiet of your home, where kindly thoughts, even of 
one's enemies, usually visit the most jaundiced mind, that 3 - ou 
write it " w r ith no personal hostility to Gen. Butler." If you can 
use such harsh language, make such unfounded accusations and 



such degrading imputations in regard to a man against whom you 
have no personal hostility, I may be permitted to think the reader 
of your letter curious to know what you would have said if you had 
happened to have a little personal spite toward the unfortunate 
object of your invective. If the readers of 3*0111- letter credit 
your statements in this regard, I fear, after reading it, the}' will 
deem' your good-will hate ; your kindly feeling toward all men, 
chronic bitterness ; and the best throbbings of your heart, malig- 
nity. 

I am afraid you do not quite understand your own nature. You 
will pardon me, therefore, if I hold the mirror up before 3*011 for a 
little while, and let you see yourself as others see 3*011, and thereb3* 
convince 3*ou how little 3*011 have realized the grand old Greek 
apothegm, " Know tli3*self." 

As one, but not the most remarkable of the examples of 3*our 
entire ignorance of 3'ourself and the motives which govern 3*our 
life, I take the astonishing assertion among the closing sentences 
of 3*our letter : " I have never held public office b3* ni3* own desire, 
and certainly wish for none now." 

I believe I can show 3*011 that 3*ou appreciate as little the 3*earn- 
ing desire of 3*our heart for office as 3*ou do the chronic feeling in 
your inmost soul of hate and malignit3* toward me. Let me simply 
recall certain facts. 

You never held a public office b3* 3'our own desire ! ! ! Why, 
Judge ! 3*ou were appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas 
more than a quarter of a century ago, — August 2, 1849, — a very 
3*oung man for such an office in those times. 

You remained on the bench of the Common Pleas until 3'ou 
thought 3*ou had got reputation enough from its prestige to enable 
you to compete with Farhrv, Wentworth, Abbot, Nelson, and your 
other associates of the Middlesex bar, so successfully as to earn 03* 
3*our profession larger emoluments than the very moderate salaiy of 
an inferior judge, of 62,000 a 3-ear ; then 3*011 resigned the office and 
tried to earn a living b}' 3*our profession. Failing in that experi- 
ment evidently, because after a short trial at the bar in competing 
with 3*our peers, when the first opportunit}* offered, and at 3*0111- 
own solicitation, — was it not so, Judge? — 3*011 were appointed 
upon the bench of the Supreme Court, where 3*011 served all through 
the war, sitting on its soft cushions until March 10, 1869, while 
other men about your own age left their business, quite as lucrative 



as your salaiy, and went to the front to do what they could do, to 
save the country from dismemberment in its hour of peril. 

I am bound by candor to say that I never heard an} 7 criticism 
upon your conduct as a judge, save that the infirmity of 3-our tem- 
per, the peculiarity of 3'our mind, and the state of your stomach 
were so unfortunate, that it was said of 3'ou by a very distinguished 
member of the bar, that you were in a continual condition of ill- 
manners on the bench, both towards your associates, the members 
of the bar, and the suitors before the court ; because 3*011 could not 
gratify the bitterness of 3'our heart, by giving judgment against 
both parties, in ever}' case. 

Indeed with all these infirmities, I am free to sa3* that 3*011 made 
a very passable judge to try small cases, wherein there were no 
circumstances to excite the Ebenezer of 3*our nature. I am im- 
pelled to this observation to demonstrate that I have " no personal 
hostilit3* " toward Judge Hoar, which might be suspected from the 
severity of the facts I reluctantly narrate. 

Upon the retirement of Chief Justice Bigelow, were you not an 
applicant for the Chief-Justiceship of that court? and were 3*011 not 
so enraged that Judge Thomas was nominated for that position by 
Governor Bullock, that 3*011 put your resignation of 3*our seat on- 
the bench into the hands of your councillor, Mr. Talbot, to be 
presented to the council in case Judge Thomas should be confirmed, 
to show, that should the council confirm Thomas, the State would 
lose Judge Hoar from the bench ; an argument, however, which was 
a very dangerous one? I am informed, as both 3*our associates of 
the bench and 3-our brethren at the bar were anxious to be relieved 
from the burden of bearing 3*0111- ill-temper and worse manners as a 
judge, that to get rid of 3*011 and get Thomas, both at once, came 
very near overcoming the political prejudices of the council against 
confirming him, and I guess would have done it if I had been at 
the time in full practice before the Supreme Court. 

Did not your friends, acting with your knowledge, bring every 
influence to bear on the council to prevent that confirmation, in 
which they succeeded? Did not 3*0111- friends approach by telegraph 
and otherwise the humble writer of this letter, to advise one of 
his personal friends, who was a member of the council, to vote 
against Judge Thomas, and did I not so advise? — not because I 
doubted his ability as a law3*cr, uprightness as a judge, or integrity 
of life, but because I felt that he was not quite sound on the con- 



stitutionality of the legal-tender act, one of the great measures of 
the war, against which he argued in the case of Parker and Davis, 
in which I was of counsel. And did not rtry friend, yielding to 
such advice as he received from others more capable, as well as 
myself, vote against Judge Thomas in your favor, giving the deter- 
mining majority of one on that question? "Were you not urged by 
your friends, with your knowledge and connivance, upon Governor 
Bullock, for the place of Chief Justice? Now, my dear Judge, as 
a man accustomed for many 3-ears to weigh evidence, does not all this 
imply on your part, some slight desire for public office? You see 
that an}' desire for office, however slight, will convict you of not 
knowing j*ourself. 

And when fortified by the representations of some of your 
associates upon the bench, that you were not qualified for the 
place of Chief Justice, because the infirmities of heart and 
body of which I have spoken make you liable to take unjust prej- 
udices against one party or the other, in cases where undoubtedly 
you think yourself unbiased, did not Governor Bullock peremp- 
torily refuse to appoint you. and appoint the late lamented Chief 
Justice Chapman? As soon as you lost the Chief-Justiceship, were 
you not, through tlu recommendation of your representative in 
Congress, Governor Boutwell, nominated as Attorney-General, 
another and more lucrative office, upon the first formation of the 
cabinet of President Grant ? 

And now, Judge, as to your appointment to the office of Attor- 
ney-General of the United States. Is there nothing suggestive of 
a desire to hold office in that chapter of your political history? 
Let me recall the facts. 

Not being known to President Grant, you were nominated as 
a member of his first cabinet on a suggestion made by Mr. 
Boutwell, when the latter gentleman, having declined the posi- 
tion of Secretary of the Interior, tendered to him by the 
President, was asked to name a suitable person from Massa- 
chusetts for the office of Attorney-General? Being thus nomi- 
nated, you were confirmed by the Senate at an earl}* daj*, not 
without surprise on the part of the friends of the administration 
that 3-011 had been selected by the President as one of his consti- 
tutional advisers. At the same time Mr. Stewart of New York was 
nominated Secretary of the Treasury, — a nomination which, failing 
to be confirmed, was thereafter withdrawn ; leaving that office free to 



8 



be tendered to Mr. Boutwell, for whom the President had originally 
intended it, in conformity with the general wish and approval of 
the Republican party. Now, Judge, what was your conduct 
toward the President and his administration at that important 
emergency? Were you not notified authoritatively from the Presi- 
dent by a telegram from his most confidential friend, the Hon. 
Elihu B. Washburn, then Secretaiy of State, that if you would de- 
cline the office of Attorne}--General, you would release the admin- 
istration from embarrassment? You will not deny, Judge, that } - ou 
received a communication to that effect. And now, in what man- 
ner did you respond to the suggestion of the President, thus at the 
opening of the administration placed in a dilemma for which he 
was not responsible, having two cabinet officers from the same 
Eastern State? Did you decline the appointment as you were 
requested to do? By no mcaus. Hastening to Washington 
without delay, you took the oath of office, thus consummating your 
official tenure, giving the friends of the administration to under- 
stand that you had no thought of retiring, but that you intended 
"to stick," or perhaps to bring yourself within the terms of the 
tenure-of-officc act. And when it was suggested to you from more 
than one quarter that you ought to retire from the cabinet in Mr. 
Boutwell's favor, whom the President desired for his Secretaiy of 
the Treasury, especially as you owed your appointment to him, did 
you not answer in substance, " Let Boutwell go; why should I 
be asked to?" adding personal ingratitude to the weightier offence 
of indecorous intrusion into the administration? 

Now, Judge, you say that you never held a public office "by 
your own desire." As, under the circumstances, nobody else desired 
that 3-011 should be Attorney-General at that time, by whose desire 
were yon there? Were not these facts well known and the subject 
of discussion at the capital? 

One who does an ungraceful and ungrateful act to a friend, in 
order to get in office, ought to desire office very much, in order to 
excuse his conduct. 

You were in office as head of the Department of Justice but 
eight months when, as the head of that department, it became 
your duty to recommend the appointment of a judge to fill the 
vacancy that occurred in the Supreme Court. Upon the first occa- 
sion, whom did the department send to the President for that 
place? EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR! If the Department 



of Justice recommended anybody to the President for that office, 
Mr. Hoar must have named himself. Mr. Stanton, the great War 
Secretary, was afterwards nominated, so that you must have pre- 
ferred yourself as judge to him. But you were rejected by the 
Senate — but of that more in its proper place. 

Do you realty think, Judge, upon the whole, that I am un- 
charitable when I believe that appointment of judge did not rain 
down on 3-011 without some scintilla of a desire to hold public 
office, or without any procurement, wish expressed, or knowledge 
on the part of Gen. Grant of that wish, that he should appoint you 
to a public office for life, out of which 3*011 could not be got except 
you committed an impeachable offence, and bad manners have 
never been held to be such an one even by nryself, who advocated 
a somewhat broad doctrine as to impeachment? If you insist, how- 
ever, that I shall believe that the President did appoint you against 
your desire and will, then I am driven to the other horn of the 
dilemma, — that he made that appointment without your desire, as 
an easy and graceful mode of getting you out of his cabinet, which, 
after your rejection b}' the Senate, he did do in such a manner that 
you sent him a very short and curt note of resignation, which did 
no credit to your good temper or taste. 

You may answer, in your own choice language, borrowed from 
the servant-girls, that he " gave you a character." True, — kind- 
hearted, good-natured man that he is ! — but so he did other 
cabinet officers, with whose names you would hardly like to have 
yours coupled. 

In a short time, at the next first possible opportunity, we find 
you holding the office of one of the Commissioners of the United 
States to settle the treaty as to the "Alabama claims." Did this 
office also rain down on }'ou without an} T shadow of desire on 3 - our 
part to hold it? You certainby accepted it with the same alacrity 
witli which 3011 accepted 3'our present bolting nomination for office,. 
at Young's Hotel, being in waiting, as the newspapers toll us, in 
that building until the committee called you into a meeting which 
I have reason to know you 3-ourself took part in causing to be 
organized, to receive your acceptance of a nomination, the letter 
of which had been before written in Concord, and was in your 
pocket. 

How recklessl3 r 3 t ou gave up the great fishing interests of Mas- 
sachusetts, which you were expected to defend and protect, by 



10 



agreeing to the articles in that treaty which bring all the British 
Provinces in competition with our own fishermen, and left the 
United States subject to a reclamation of man}- millions of dollars 
by (ireat Britain on account of those ver} r fisheries, I, in mere}', 
spare 3-ou the recital ; besides, I fear a bare statement of the facts 
about that treat}*, in the most courteous language, might, by some 
uncharitable persons, be construed into "personal abuse." 

You are next found holding the office of Presidential Elector, an 
office with very little to do, indeed, it is true ; but then the smallest 
offices arc, by some persons who do not "desire public office," 
thankfully received. 

Once more an office-holder, we find 3*011 Representative of the 
Seventh District. Do you say that you did not want this office? 
Your son was a delegate to the convention which nominated you, 
and there are members of that convention who will say. I have 
been informed, that ho actually canvassed in your behalf. Is he 
so undutiful as to force office on his father against his desire? A 
bright boy, did he not detect some infinitesimal yearning for office 
on the part of his parent, and strive to please him b}' getting it 
for him ? 

Next we learn that you made a small run in the Legislature for 
the office of U. S. Senator from Massachusetts, and were defeated, 
although the Republican party was largely in the majority. Of 
course wc are to believe that you allowed yourself to be a candi- 
date, and suffer defeat in the candidature for the office, without any 
desire for the place, precisely as you insist 3*011 are running now 
for an office which you told your friends in the Russell convention, 
held in the same room at Young's Hotel, that you would not take, 
if you could get every vote in the district. Now. my dear Judge, 
don't deny that, because I have it from the gentleman who asked 
you to be their candidate instead of Russell. Or was your motive 
in then running for the Senate, as it is now, not to be elected, but 
simply to defeat the Republican candidate in order to elect a Dem- 
ocrat? 

You have 3*0111* choice of motives. 

Either you desired the office and wanted to be elected, or else 
the same malignity, envy and jealousy which some well-disposed 
persons believe prompt the present candidature, actuated you then. 
But much as I have cause to impute bad motives to you, Judge, I 
prefer to believe it was a desire for the office of Senator which led 



11 

you to run, because I prefer not to believe that you are actuated by 
"malice toward all mankind and charity to none ; " for, upon the 
very next vacancy in the Senate, I find you running again for 1hat 
high office ; and I must either believe — the second time certainly 
— that you desired the office, or believe 3-011 hate every Republican 
and wish to defeat everybody except Democratic candidates. 

Another thing, Judge, which is evidence to my mind that you 
" desired" the office of Senator, is that although the dying Sumner 
had confided his Civil Rights Bill to your care, when you sat by his 
death-bedside, — a fact which was telegraphed all over the country 
by your procurement evidently, as he could not have done it, — yet 
when you were running for the Senate, J. B. Smith, his life-long 
friend, then a member of the Legislature, desirous of voting for 
you, tried in every proper way to get an authorized expression from 
you in favor of Sumner's bill, which was to be the safeguard of the 
colored race. He could obtain no expression, and why? A bold 
stand in favor of the bill would have repelled the Democrats, 
whom you hoped would come over to you and elect you over your 
Republican competitors. I should desire public office very much 
indeed, Judge, before I would seal rny lips as to nry position on any 
great measure ; but then, 3-011 know, Judge, I am only a common 
erring mortal, and not a " pure-minded," cold-blooded, unselfish 
statesman, who has spent half his life in office not " by his own 
desire." 

I wish to do you justice. I admit that you might have been 
elected to the present Congress instead of Mr. Tarbox or Dr. Aver, 
and refused the office when you might have had it. I am bound to 
say thus much, because it is the first office I ever knew you to refuse. 
Still, 3-ou will remember, 1113' dear Judge, 3-011 told me the reason 
was that 3-011 could not afford to take it ; that a man could only live 
in Washington respectably on the salary ; and 3-et, my dear Judge, 
one of 3-our objections to me in 3-our letter is what you are pleased 
to call a " salary grab," which means, I suppose, that I voted for 
an increase of that inadequate salary which has deprived the pres- 
ent Congress of 3-0111- great talents. 

When you say " salary grab," you certainly could not refer to the 
fact that I took what is called "back pay," — that is, pay received for 
services for a time previous to its being voted — service rendered 
under a contract, as it is claimed — to work for a smaller salaiy, 
because when you were Judge of the Supreme Court in 18G6 your 



12 



pay was raised from three thousand to four thousand dollars a 
year, and you took the " back pay " which the Legislature voted 
yon, with the same alaciity that you have always run for and taken 
office without any " desire " for it. True, you may say that your 
hack pay was not a large amount; but then, if it is a " salary 
grab " to take " back pay," you fell with much slighter temptation 
than I did, for the amount which came to me was considerabl}- 
larger. Now don't misunderstand me, Judge. I do not think it 
was wrong for you to take that " back pay ; " but, having taken it, 
it docs not seem good taste to make railing accusations against me 
for doing the same thing, because yours was " such a little one." 
Siuh a procedure does not seem the emanation of a judicial mind. 

The last public office — for I think it is a high and honorable 
one — which you held was that of Delegate to the Cincinnati Con- 
vention for the selection of a presidential candidate for the Repub- 
lican party. True, you might not have desired that office, although 
3*011 accepted, because there teas no pay attached to it except what 
seems to me the highest compensation for public service, — an 
opportunity to do good to the country. 

To use a mode of statement copied from your letter, "as the 
newspapers inform us," — by which one can make an injurious 
imputation without making himself responsible for it. an in- 
genious device, which does credit to 3*our cunning but not to your 
courage, — not wanting the office, you got elected to it by repre- 
senting yourself, or being represented, as an advocate of the can- 
didature of Mr. Blaine; and, "as the newspapers inform us," 
when you got to Cincinnati you turned up something very different 
entirely ; not a friend of Governor Hayes, for whom you now 
express admiration, because 3*011 so managed yourself and your 
colleagues that 3*ou not only contrived to cover yourself and the 
State with merited ridicule, but also never cast its vote for Gov- 
ernor Hayes; for, with a perversity of political senselessness which 
1 always, in you, attribute to bad health, or bad temper, or both, 
you kept the vote of the Massachusetts delegation on other candi- 
dates, so that owing to your management Massachusetts in the 
convention never cast her vote for Hayes at all. He was nom- 
inated without her aid, and you now seem to be managing the 
Republican party of Massachusetts in the best manner, if it were 
possible so to do, to have Hayes elected without her vote. I hope 



13 



and believe you may not so divide and distract the party as to be 
successful in what seems to be j'our aim, — its destruction only. 

Now, my dear Judge, let us count up. You have been appointed 
to four different offices, and elected to three. Your services in 
them, covering by far the largest part of your business life, were in 
the appointive offices, being of the class of the largest emolument, 
and the three elective offices having but little or no emolument, for 
I do not think a representative in Congress has any. You have 
been appointed to, candidate for, and voted for, and failed to get 
six of the highest offices in the gift of the appointing power or of 
the Commonwealth, which if you had got would have occupied the 
whole of the rest of your lifetime, and are now running for another, 
, with about the same show of success that you had of being Chief 
Justice of the Commonwealth, or a Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. 

In vieW of these facts, which I have been compelled to set out 
with a tediousness in length, — for which I owe you, who have to 
read this letter, an apology, which is, if you had not held so many 
offices, and been candidate for so many more, I could have made 
it shorter, — do you, my dear Judge, really think I add the sus- 
piciousness of unbelief to my other short-comings which you have 
enumerated, when I say I cannot believe you when you say "I 
never held public office by my own desire " ? To others the invet- 
eracy of your office-holding seems only equalled by the continuity of 
your office-seeking : both are chronic and have been the business, 
not the episodes, of your life. 

Let us tabulate your want of " desire " for public office : — 



TABLE OF OFFICES HELD, ArPLIED FOR, RUN FOR AND LOST BY HON. 
E. R. HOAR, WITHOUT ANY DESIRE FOR ANY OF THEM. 



Appointed. 



Elected. 



Judge of Common Tleas. Member of Congress. 
Judge of Supreme Court.! Presidential Elector. 
Attorney General. I Delegate to Convention. 

Commissioner on Ala- 
bama Claims. 



Total 



Total 



Grand total 



Candidate for and lost. 



Chief Justice Supreme 
Court, Mass. 

Judge of Supreme Court 
of United States. 

Senator in place of Sum- 
ner. 

Senator in place of Wil- 
son. 

Member of Congress 
(bolted to get it). 

Total .... 5 



14 



I Lave no doubt that you believed 3'ourself when you wrote that 
" 3 T ou bad never beld public office by your own desire ; " but then, 
as I told you to begin with, 3-011 don't know yourself or see your- 
self as others see 3*ou. 

I doubt not 3011 as firmly believe that 30U " have no personal 
hostility to me " as you do that you " never held public office 1)3' 
your own desire." The trouble seems to be that you have got the 
cardinal virtues and the deadly sins so mixed up in j'our mind that 
you mistake greed for office for public virtue, covetousness for 
generosity, hate for love, malice for good will, prejudices for con- 
victions, dyspepsia for a conscience, and cultivate malignity as a 
parlor plant, believing it to be one of the Christian graces. Indeed, 
your state of feeling toward me seems formulated b3* Tennyson's 
lines, wherein he describes the kind of love his heroine bore to her 
lover who had betrayed her sister : — 

"I hated him with the hate of hell, 
But I loved Ids beauty passing veil." 

Not to compare small things with great, let me, in a word, give 
you my own record as a public officer. I have never held office 
or received a dollar of public money for pay as an officer, save as 
a soldier in the service, or as a legislator. But I held both these 
positions by " my own desire," and sought them to gratify an 
honorable ambition, and to be of service to my country. I leave 
it to the just judgment of all men which has been the " office-job- 
ber." 

Having exhibited to you as well as I may the condition of your 
mental and moral organism at the moment you wrote your 
letter, •• to supply the ripe wants of a friend," I break a custom 
and reply to some of its statements. As long as they are simply 
the emanations of newspaper slang-whangers,' I make it the rule 
of my life to live down slanders, not to reply to them. But com- 
ing from so respectable a source, it is due to yourself to set 3-ou 
right about many things in regard to myself, where you are clearly 
wrong, as your statements, distorted by the medium of a perverse 
imagination, clouded by a deep-seated feeling of revenge for fan- 
cied wrongs, make evident. 

, \ ou say that " at the last State convention at which he [my- 
self] sought the nomination for Governor, and led his own forces, 
it was only after they had been detected in a large amount of 



15 



double voting, that he yielded to the will of the honest majority. 
It was on that occasion that he asked, with a humor of his own, 
why it was always insisted on taking extraordinary precautions to 
secure an honest vote whenever he happened to be a candidate." 

You will pardon me, Judge, for saying that I never used that 
expression, and no reported proceedings of the convention made at 
the time will so show. You sa} T " they were never needed in a 
Republican State convention in Massachusetts before." You are 
mistaken, Judge. The record of the ballot taken for Lieutenant- 
Governor, when I was not a candidate, showed a vote largely in 
excess of the true one. Ask Gov. Talbot how he was treated. 
At this very convention of which you speak, I r am prepared to show 
that I ivas cheated out of the nomination. Up to this hour I have 
steadily declined to make the charge or produce the evidence. I 
have covered it as did the sons of Noah the disgrace of their 
father, when they walked backwards and threw over him their 
cloaks to conceal the sin of the old man. In the first place, at 
nearly twelve o'clock at night, more votes were thrown after hun- 
dreds of the delegates had gone home, than the entire number 
which could properly be members of the convention if all were 
present. And no unprejudiced man can believe that such a vote 
could possibly be thrown at that hour of the night. The oppo- 
sition, led by a political priest, a kind of man that all history 
shows is the most unscrupulous and dangerous of all men in 
political affairs, was organized on the cry " Anything to beat 
Butler." 

Who were the unauthorized voters who carried that convention at 
Worcester against me at midnight? I have the evidence, and can ex- 
hibit it in the shape of sworn testimony when called for by the party 
organization. If the Republican party desire that I shall go far- 
ther into the investigation, and produce the evidence to its disgrace, 
unwilling as I am to blot the record of the party, I will do it. But I 
state the fact to be, sustained by sworn evidence, that, at midnight, 
after many members of the convention had given up their tickets 
and left to take the cars for their homes, as they declared, in reply 
to the inquiry of the door-keeper if they wished to return to the 
convention, the Chairman of the Committee on Tickets, under 
whose instruction the door-keeper was acting, came to him and 
took a package of tickets from him, and went downstairs with 
them ; that immediately thereupon a large number of new dele- 



16 



gates appeared, passing in on the strength of those tickets. This 
Chairman of the Committee was an anti-Butler man, by genus, 
and of the Hoar species, and of course acting against me. I know 
him anil his name, and whenever he chooses to deny the fact he 
will be very efficiently answered. Whether correctly or not, I 
firmly believed at, that time that I was disgracefully jockeyed out 
of that nomination by you and your associates; but I refused to 
bolt the nomination, lest that bolt should affect the integrity of the 
part}', and for no other reason whatever. In other words, I did 
what I doubt you, from your mental constitution, are capable of 
doing, — I sacrificed rny personal feelings for the good of the party 
and the country. 

A word in your ear privately, Judge : the less you say about 
that convention the better. 

Again : You say that " when he boasted to two of his colleagues 
in "Washington in 1874, that he got their telegrams before they 
did ; that he had a man wdio read them off the wires by the click." 
I deny that I made any such boast. Let any two of my col- 
leagues come forward and sa}' that I used those words to them. I 
knew <>f but one man who was telegraphing from Washington to 
Boston upon the occasion you speak of, and therefore I could not 
have said it. Second : I never said " I had a man" who read the 
telegrams from the wires by the click. 

When a foolish contest was raised over the confirmation of the 
Collector of the Port of Boston, the whole country became in- 
terested in the fight, and information poured in to me from all 
quarters. Do you mean to sa}' that you would not have received 
such information? The very next sentence of your letter convicts 
you. You say, " And if, as the neivspapers inform us, lie employed 
such an agent as John D. Sanborn to dog the steps of Sir. Peine 
in New York, and find out his business there, General Butler 
showed that he regarded as legitimate weapons of political war- 
fare, means which in private or professional life he would undoubt- 
edly think base and dishonorable." 

" And if, as the newspapers inform us," where did you and the 
newspapers get that information? From a telegraphic dispatch of 
mine, filched from a committee-room by a dishonest subordinate, 
fur I won't believe that even a committee of a Confederate Congress 
would permit the publication of private dispatches of private in- 
dividuals. And von make use of that information derived from 



17 



that telegram, so stolen and published, to make a charge against 
me. Yon say the use of information derived from the telegram of 
another, in your own choice language, is "on a level with listening 
at kej'-holes or picking pockets ; " yet in this very letter you have 
done that very thing, and shelter yourself under, " And if, as the 
newspapers inform us." Speak up like a man now, Judge, and say 
whether you did not know that the information you use was from 
one of my own private telegrams, and no other source whatever. 

I have no cause to be ashamed or disturbed at the publication of 
that telegram, or in stating exactly what I did. The Simmons 
fight was over. I had been informed that Mr. Henry L. Peirce 
had gone to New York to get a New York man to apply for the 
position of minister at Venezuela, as against the present minis- 
ter, a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, whom I favored ; 
Teirce hoping, as the Secretary of State was from New York, 
he might break my recommendation with the State department 
by producing a New Yorker as a candidate for the place. Wish- 
ing to ascertain if the information I had received was true, I sent 
to a constituent of mine, Mr. John D. Sanborn, whom I knew 
to be in New York, to ascertain the facts, and who Peirce's 
candidate was to be, if he had one, so that I might put the Secre- 
tary of State on his guard. Is there am'thing illegitimate or im- 
proper in so doing? Yet j'ou indulge in a spiteful fling at a man 
in these words : " He employed such an agent as John D. San- 
born." Now, Judge, Mr. Sanborn is your equal in everything that 
makes an honest man, and your superior in many things which 
make up a good member of society, and I know 3-011 both very well. 
Through j-our machinations, and those of another member of the 
delegation whose name I will not now mention, — for I am waiting 
for him to take a hand in this fight, as it is nry custom not to be the 
aggressor, — an investigation for weeks wa3 had of Mr. Sanborn, 
particularly because it was supposed that through that investiga- 
tion you could get at me. The Committee of Ways and Means 
found that Mr. Sanborn had done nothing that the law did not 
direct and authorize him to do ; and if there was an} r fault in what 
he had done, it was a fault of the law. A majority of the Repub- 
lican members of that committee recommended the Commissioners 
of Internal Revenue to again employ him in the collection of delin- 
quent taxes ; and he has been employed from that day to this more 
or less in that work, under Mr. Bristow, for whom you voted as 



18 



candidate for President, as against Governor Hayes, and that, too, 
without any recommendation or interference on my part. 

Your malice toward me seems to make you unjust to everybody 
else, for you say, " Collectors detail subordinates to attend to his 
errands and run his campaign." Now, if you did not know that 
to be true, Judge, then you told what you did not know to be 
true, as if it were true ; and that you will recognize yourself as 
being the most vicious kind of falsification. No collector, past 
or present, lias ever detailed any man to attend to my errands or 
run any of my campaigns. Men do kindly things for me from 
motives which you cannot possibly appreciate and can hardly 
understand, because 3'ou never did a service to airy man without 
pay down that I ever heard of; therefore, you never knew what it 
was to have men grateful enough to you, and kindly enough dis- 
posed towards 3-011 to, of their own free will and friendliness, do 
everything they can do for you. I would advise you to try to apt 
kindly towards somebody once, and get somebody to feel in that 
way towards 3-ourself once. It would be a new sensation, and 
would please you with its novelty, if it did not touch your heart. 

In your kindly manner, you speak of me as one "whom the 
voters of the sixth Districl could tolerate no longer," meaning, I 
suppose, that I was defeated in the Sixth District in my last candi- 
dature. Would you not think it personal abuse if I should Bay 
of you that you were not lit to run for Congress, because in 3'our 
last two Senatorial candidatures 3-011 were ignominiously beaten, 
and that, therefore, the people of the Commonwealth never would 
" tolerate " you at all? Or would 3-011 think I was dealing kindly 
with your brother, George F. Hoar, if I taunted him with the 
words. " The people of Worcester will not ' tolerate ' yon. because 
in the same campaign of 1874 in which I was defeated he lost a 
greater number of votes than I did of his former Republican 
majority in the heart of the Commonwealth, and was only elected 
by 462 votes, when he had a plurality the election before of 
7,68 1 votes? this great loss, in my judgment, being in part caused 
by the unjust acts of 3-ourself and your associates towards myself 
in the gubernatorial convention. He yielded, however, to what 
he seems to have regarded as the popular verdict, and has not 
dared since to try the result of an election by the people in any 
district. 

Your next objection is expressed in these words : ." Gen. Butler 



19 

was in favor of paying the national debt in greenbacks, — a meas- 
ure which the Republican party has thought inconsistent with the 
national honor, — and has recently avowed his belief that the 
policy of providing for a speedy return to specie payments is un- 
sound, oppressive and mischievous." 

One would have supposed that a man who has been accustomed 
to charge juries upon facts would state an opponent's position with 
more accuracy. I never was in favor cf paying the " national 
debt " in greenbacks. The larger part of it could not be so paid. 
I said, what you do not dare to deny as a lawyer, that the contract, 
under which the five-twenty bonds were issued in 1862, was that 
they should be paid in greenbacks ; and no respectable member of 
the bar, who has ever examined the question, has come to a differ- 
ent opinion, — but they were but a small part of the national debt. 

Again : I never have " avowed niy belief that the policy of pro- 
viding for a speed}* return to specie payments is unsound." My 
proposition has alwa3*s been, and you will find it in my letter of 
acceptance, that what I have objected to is the policy of attempting 
by law to return to specie payments without providing the meaiis by 
which our currency might be raised to specie values, and thus make 
specie pa^yments possible. In case of some men I should be chari- 
table enough to suppose that they did not see the difference between 
the two statements ; but you, Judge, I know to have a too discrimi- 
nating mind in dealing with propositions not to understand the 
exact difference ; and your looseness of statement of my position 
shows that you dare not go to the people with an accurate state- 
ment of it. Having, many times over, and in my letter of acceptance 
of the candidature, said that my difficulty was that I thought it 
impossible to return to specie paj'inents b\' legal enactment alone ; 
that such a course would be oppressive to the debtor ; and that I 
thought it far better that the country should so grow in credit so that 
provision might be made for a j'eturn to specie values, but that, 
as the party had resolved to the contrary, and the Democratic 
party had apparently come on the same platform, the experiment 
would have to be tried, — I am quite willing you should make all 
out of that objection to me you can ; but please don't delude airy- 
body b}* a garbled statement of my position. 

Again : You are pleased to say that the convention which nomi- 
nated me, although composed of delegates elected by the Republi- 
cans in the several towns at meetings called for that purpose, and 



20 



at one of which you yourself presided, according to the exact 
usage of the Republican party, if it does not nominate to suit you, 
"becomes a bolting convention." Be it so. Then why not have 
the State Committee or the District Committee call another? 
Where did you get your credentials to call one at Young's Hotel? 
If you ^iil call another convention, Judge, in the Seventh District, 
of the voters, through the regular part}' organization, and prom- 
ise not to bolt if you lose, I will resubmit my nomination to that 
convention, and you yourself may run as a candidate. I promise 
to abide by the result. 

You say that the convention which nominated me " was not the 
entertainment to which you were invited;" but this is an enter- 
tainment to which 3-011 arc invited. I will even contest Concord 
with you, for a delegation, provided you won't hold the hat at the 
cam us in which the votes are deposited, as you did at the last 
one. 

If 3-ou are right that the late convention in the Seventh District 
was a bolting convention only, there would seem to be a necessity 
for the call of another, because that convention nominated an 
elector for President and Vice-President of the United States, for 
the Republican votes of the district, and there certainly ought to 
be a regular nomination by the Republican party for Elector for 
President, and there is none now if that convention was a " bolting 
convention." 

Again: At the State convention the delegates from my district 
put me in nomination before that convention as a member of the 
State Central Committee. That would have been a good oppor- 
tunity for you to have contested my status in the Republican party. 
The State convention would surely have a right to reject the nomi- 
nation of any man on the State Central Committee who vras not a 
Republican ; but you thought it, doubtless, easier to get a vote 
on my republicanism in a convention of }our thirty-five friends 
at Young's Hotel, than in the State convention, composed of 
Republican delegates. I will try that question with you, Judge, 
in any State convention where yon will agree that the chairman of 
the Committee on Tickets won't take packages of tickets, deposited 
with the door-keeper by delegates that have gone home, out and 
distribute them among your friends to come in and vote as delegates 
of the convention. Without precaution against such " methods" 



21 



as that, I am willing to admit I should again be beaten ; because 
those are not the " methods " that I employ. 

Your next objection is, that I am " a scoffer of civil-service re- 
form." No, Judge, 3011 mistake ; I am only a scoffer at hypocrisy. 
If I understand civil-service reform, it means, members of Congress 
shall not interfere with the executive departments in the selection 
of their subordinates, by which those departments are to be carried 
on. Am I right in that as a part of the scheme of civil-service 
reform? Very well : let me state a fact, Judge, which illustrates 
the difference between preaching and practice. 

When the Secretary of the Treasury directed the cutting down of 
the expenses of the Boston Custom House some $40,000, by the 
dismissal, among other things, of useless officers, I never interfered 
or advised in the selection of the officers that were to be dismissed, 
nor did I ask to have any friend or supporter of mine retained. I 
assumed that the Collector would know what was for the benefit of 
the public service in that regard, and I did not know. Now, Judge, 
let me ask 3 - ou two or three questions. 

In the process of that reduction did not the Collector relieve 
from duty two officers from the Seventh District, appointed with 
your recommendation as its representative in Congress, discharged 
as a part of the necessary reduction of his force ? 

Was he not called to Washington thereupon by Secretary 
Bristow, and did he not meet 3-011, then a member of Congress, be- 
fore the Secreta^ ? Did 3011 not then insist to the Secretary that 
the Collector should restore those men, and argue at length 
that 3'our men should be retained in office, although the Collector 
had certified to the Secretar3 T that their services were no longer 
needed, nor the services of an3'body else in their places? Did not 
the Collector in3'our presence state to 3 r ou that these men's services 
were not required, and did 3*011 not still insist that the3 r should be 
kept because the3 r were 3'our appointees ? 

When, in the course of 3*our speech to the Secretary, 3 - ou referred 
to my district, did not the Collector call 3'our attention to the fact 
that I had not interfered with his action in behalf of airy of the 
Custom House employes in nxy district, but had left him to do 
according to the dictates of his own judgment, and that yourself 
and brother, who, I think, was present, were the onl3 T two members 
of Congress who had ever interfered with him as to which 
of his* subordinates he should discharge? Yielding to your 



22 



importun.ties, pressed with great vehemence, did not the Secretary 
finally order these men — good men, I doubt not, but not needed 
— to be retained, and did not the Collector obey that order? And 
were not two men thus fastened upon the Treasury by you, a 
member of Congress, that were nut needed, in opposition to the 
judgment of the officer charged with the carrying on of that branch 
of the public service? 

That. Judge, is the kind of civil-service reform I scoff at; and 
nothing but my personal respect for you, and the entire absence 
of •• personal hostility " toward me on your part, prevents my 
scoffing at the reformer ! 

>,'o\v, .Judge, how, after that, could you go to Cincinnati and 
vote for civil-service reform? or were you, in that regard, as well 
as in regard to the candidature of Mr. Blaine, one thing in Massa- 
chusetts and another in Cincinnati? "Thou hypocrite, first cast 
out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt sec clearly 
to cast onl the mote out of thy brother's eye." 

The difference between us. Judge, is this, as 1 understand it : I 
do full as well as I preach; you preach a great deal better than 
you do. 

Your next objection I find to be that " the nomination of General 
Butler in this district by a Republican convention, and tin- placing 
him on the State Republican Committee by the delegates of Lowell, 
is doing our party incalculable harm throughout the country." 

V'here do you find the evidence of that. Judge? I have had in- 
vitations to speak dining the campaign from twenty odd political 
organizations in the States in the North, and four in the South. In 
this campaign I have been obliged to refuse in every instance but one. 
Called by public business to the State of Ohio, I spoke there at 
the most earnest request of the Republican organization of the 
county. After that I received the most urgent appeals from the 
Republican organization of the State of Indiana to go there ; but I 
learned while in Ohio of the init iation of your Young's Hotel cabal 
against the integrity of the Republican party in Massachusetts, 
and I refused to go to Indiana, as I had before refused, and pub- 
lished my refusal. And while I don't claim that I could have done 
much good by taking part in the canvass, yet I will state a fact or 
two. 

Your letter dates your objections to me as a Republican as far 
back as 18G7 ; and what I have done has not been done in a corner. 



23 

You will hardly claim that I am any different now, either for 
better or worse, than in 1S72, when, at the request of the Na- 
tional and State Committees, I canvassed almost the entire States 
of Maine and Indiana, and a large portion of New York, a por- 
tion of Illinois and Ohio, for the Republican nominees for Presi- 
dent and Vice-President, travelling some 3,000 miles and making 
sixty speeches. Indiana was then carried by an overwhelming 
majority ; and from the earnest appeals of its Republican organiza- 
tion, and of Senator Morton and others to me, to come there again 
this year, I infer that they thought my "methods " of canvass had 
done, and would do, good. Mischievous interference with the 
politics of the Seventh District has kept me out of Indiana this 
year, and it has gone Democratic. If you will look at the returns 
in the precinct where I spoke in Ohio you -will find that it quite 
maintained its majority of last year. Now I don't say propter, 
hoc, but I have a right to say post hoc. I had rather take the 
opinion of the true, fighting, earnest Republicans of Indiana and 
Ohio who did not vote for nor elect Democratic Congressmen two 
years ago, upon the question of the value of my services to the 
Republican party, than that of yourself or your associates, who 
sent a Democrat to Congress from the Republican State of Massa-. 
chusetts by your votes. 

Whenever the Republican party can say to me, "Gen. Butler, 
3-011 have wilfully, by your influence and votes directly used for that 
purpose, caused the return of Democratic members of Congress," 
I, in common decency, shall withdraw myself from that party, and 
shall certainly not attempt to dictate to its voters their nominees ; 
nor shall I have the hardihood to present myself for their suffrages 
on the ground that I am a better Republican than any one who 
for sixteen years has done all in his power for its success. 

I have again to complain, Judge, of your attempt in your letter 
to so word it as not to make charges for which I can hold you 
responsible, but simply to make a statement in such manner as to 
leave the charge to be inferred. I quote as follows : — 

" What, but the deep-seated and wide-spread dissatisfaction ex- 
cited at the North at the Sanborn moieties, salary-grabs, the bar- 
gains, contracts, office-jobbing and caucus-packing, which occur to 
every man's mind when Gen. Butler's name is mentioned in con- 
nection with politics?" 

Thus you mean to leave it to be inferred that I had something 



24 



to do with the " Sanborn moieties." You know — and therefore 
j'ou ought not to have made such a statement — that, whether the 
" Sanborn moieties " were right or wrong, I had nothing to do with 
them whatever. I neither advised his employment, recommended 
him, or did anything about them, directl}' or indirectly. Months 
of investigation, inspired by you and one of your colleagues, 
demonstrated that fact, as it now stands upon record. Whether 
the "Sanborn moieties" were right or wrong depended upon the 
law which authorized them, which did not emanate from any com- 
mittee of which I was a member, and with which I had nothing to 
do. ami with the administration of which law I never interfered or 
took part. 

Under a law passed by Congress after debate, Mr. Sanborn was 
employed to collect taxes from railroads that had cheated the 
government out of them and withheld them for more than five 
years. The law gave him half for making the collections and dis- 
covering the frauds, and for that 1 had no responsibility ; and he 
was not employed to do the business until two other parties had 
been employed and failed to make the collections. But 1 will now 
say that, in my belief, more than $5,000,000 of withheld taxes 
have been lost to the United States because of the raid upon that 
law instituted in part by yourself in the hope of striking at me. 

" Bargains" did yon Bay, Judge? Why, I never made but one 
political bargain of sufficient consequence to be in my memory for 
a d.y, save with you and your free-soil friends, in 1849-50, b}' 
which the Democrats were to give the free-soilers the Senator, in 
case of success, and you were to give us the State Government. 
That bargain was fairly carried out, was called the "coalition," 
and elected Sumner; and we thought it all right and "pure," 
didn't we. Judge? But, bless us! Judge B. R. Curtis published 
a pamphlet, in which he gave it as his deliberate legal opinion that 
our '• bargain " or " coalition " was an indictable conspiracy <tt com,' 
mon law. How differently different people look upon the acts 
even of as " pure" a man as yourself, to be sure ! That ought to 
teach you, Judge, to have a little charity and leniency in your 
judgment of poor me. 

In the matter of "contracts," I have never had or made any 
contract with the government, nor have had any interest in any 
except as a member of a Company which has done work for the 



25 



government, precisely the same as any other individual in the com- 
munity. 

"Contracts" in relation to government matters, do I hear you 
say, Judge? Well, I will tell you what I think would be a contract 
about government affairs which would be disgraceful for me to 
enter into ; and I think you will agree with me. If I should be 
employed by the government, or anybody else, to give a legal 
opinion upon and manage a law case, and, after I had done so, and 
become conversant with all the points on that side, I should take 
employment on the other side, and receive large fees for my ser- 
vices, specially because of my knowledge of the case, got when I 
was the lawyer for the first party, I should say I had disgraced my- 
self, my profession and my State ; and I am certain if I had done so 
you would have mentioned it in your letter as a reason why you 
could not support me for Congress. 

Well, then, Judge (correct me if I get the facts wrong — and I 
shall not need correction), did not the Central Pacific Railroad 
have a claim for many millions of land grant and bonds, to be 
given by the United States as a subsidy, depending upon cer- 
tain law points, and also upon the approval of a map of location, 
which was so preposterous that even Andrew Johnson would not 
approve it, as it would take man}' millions out of the Treasury 
without any equivalent? 

Were not these law questions pending before the Department 
of Justice, having been reported to it before 3*011 became Attorney- 
General? Did you not hear, or read printed arguments upon them, 
while acting for the United States as its Attorney-General ? 

Did not those arguments fail to convince you that 3*011 ought to 
advise the President to approve that map, and you did not so ad- 
vise him? Was not that all so? 

You did right, Judge ; nobody had bribed 3*011 or offered to bribe 
you to give a different opinion that I know of. 

Immediately after you resigned your office of Attorney-General, 
did you not receive a large retainer {not too large for such a ser- 
vice) on behalf of the Central Pacific Railroad, to argue this very 
case of theirs before the Executive or other departments of the 
government? And did 3*011 not so argue? 

Nay, did 3'ou not, under the pressure of 3*our fees, go to the 
President and use* all possible political, personal and legal influ- 
ence upon him, as his late law adviser, to prevail upon the Presi- 



2G 

dent to approve that map and thereby lay the foundation for filching 
out of the people of the United States, in land and bonds, quite as 
many miliums as you are years old? Do you yourself believe that 
you received your retainers on your supposed merits as a lawyer, or 
simply because of the knowledge obtained and influence acquired by 
you in the case — because you had been Attorney-General? Of 
course the railroad got you as ex-Attorncy-General, not as lawyer. 
If the latter had been whal they paid for, they would have retained 
you before, as you were a better lawyer before you were Attorney- 
General than after. My dear Judge, getting into high office seems 
to have shrivelled you up as a lawyer somehow, as a ripe pear is 
sometimes by too much light in the fall; at least I thought so 
when we tried the Weld case together, when you let your clients in 
for a 8400,000 judgment. 

I am making this letter too long, Judge, so that I will not say 
anything now about the other retainers you took against the gov- 
ernment in other railroads and the wool case, where you not 
Only argued what the law was. but testified what yon. as legislator, 
enacted it to be, and so the government lost three-quarters of a 
million. 

My quiver is by no means exhausted. 1 am keeping a few 
arrows for the next fight. 

A> to office-jobbing, by which, if I understand, you mean selling 
offices, I never received, directly or indirectly, one penny for put- 
ting any man in or out of office. Nor have I ever known but a 
single officer of my recommendation fail in his duty to the govern- 
ment, and as soon as I had know ledge of that failure I recommended 
his removal. 

The next charge which you leave to be inferred against me is 
" caucus-packing." I hardly know that I precisely understand what 
you mean by that. If you mean that when I have been a can- 
didate for elective office I have wished my friends to attend the 
caucus in my behalf, I have done that, and no more; and yon. 1 
am certain, have done the same. First, because at that State ( in- 
vention where you appeared to oppose me, I am informed that you 
were elected a delegate at a caucus in Concord where there were 
but seven individuals present, and four of them your relatives by 
blood or marriage. I never packed or unpacked a caucus so badl}' 
as that in my life. Again, at the last caucus in Concord to nom- 
inate delegates to the Seventh District Convention, the action of 



27 



which you bolt, when you presided, fearing that there were not 
enough of your friends present to carry the caucus, delayed the pro- 
ceedings until your son and your retainers scoured the streets of 
Concord and hauled men into the caucus, and were enabled by so 
doing to get twelve majority, out of one hundred and eight voters, 
against me, you yourself holding the hat into which the ballots 
were deposited ; so that I am told some men on whom you had 
influence or other claims did not vote as they had previously 
declared they would do. But of this I speak of information and 
belief, and not of personal knowledge. 

I believe now I have examined every charge you bring against 
me in your letter. I have opposed to every one that affects my 
personal character my denial, and I challenge the proof in a single 
instance to invalidate that denial. You yourself have been careful 
to so word the charges that I cannot hold you responsible for either 
of them in any forum where the questions can be tested by evi- 
dence. Make any charge reflecting on my character as an honest 
man and a good citizen, directly, and you will have an opportunity 
to make good that charge before some tribunal that can take 
jurisdiction over it. 

Your dislike, to give it no harsher name, toward me will incite you 
to destroy a political rival who, you think, — but there you are 
wrong, — defeated your nomination before the United States Sen- 
ate. I want to assure you now, in this public manner, — and any 
Senator that knows to the contrary will inform you if I am wronf, — 
that in that contest I took no part. I deemed you unfit for a Judge 
of the Supreme Court of the United States for reasons of fitness 
not affecting your personal integrity, but for reasons of the same 
nature as would prevent my putting a balky horse in a team, even 
if he were well blooded. I did not interfere, however, with your 
confirmation, because everybody in Washington knew that you did 
not stand a ghost of a chance of being confirmed. You had been 
there just long enough for people to know you, and the Senate of 
the United States is too august a bod}- to be affected in their action 
by the personal clacque of a mutual-admiration society in Massa- 
chusetts. Therefore you were rejected, with but twelve Senators, 
as I am informed, of either party, voting in your favor, after most 
strenuous efforts in your behalf by the two Senators from Massa- 
chusetts, with the added prestige of a nomination by President 
Grant, then in the zenith of his power and influence. I don't re- 



28 



member now of a single other instance where the nomination of an 
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States has 
been rejected when the majority of the Senate was in political accord 
with the President. Therefore I infer that there must have been 
some radical defect as to your personal fitness which caused the 
catastrophe. I doubt if you fully comprehend what the matter was 
yourself; because, as I have already told you, you don't see your- 
self as others see you. 

Now, Judge, you and I have lived in the County of Middle- 
sex forty-eight years together ; you have known of my incomings 
and outgoings ; you are a lawyer of ability ; you know the power 
of evidence. If you know of any act of mine which affects my 
personal integrity, or believe }-ou can prove one, state it over your 
name specifically, " I know or can prove this or that ;" and if 30U 
do prove it, you will destro}- me and gratify your spleen. 

Having thus disposed of your political charges against me, I 
come to what ought, in my judgment, to affeel your candidature for 
any office in the minds of all just men. " Caucus-packing" may 
be very had, if by it you understand bringing men into a caucus 
to carry a political point against fair and honest judgment. lie it 
so ; but how does that compare in enormity with packing the bench 
of the Supreme Court of the United States in order to reverse a 
fair and honest judgment upon a great question of constitutional 
law and right, and involving the interests of every man in the 
country? Of this political wickedness, Judge, you are guilty, and 
I now submit the proof. My allegations, you see, are specific, 
direct, positive : and I am responsible for them. 

The facts are as follows : — 

As we have seen, 3-011 were Attorney-General, at the head of the 
Department of Justice of the United States, in 1^09. The case of 
Hepburn vs. Grisicold, involving the constitutionality of the legal- 
tender act, had been and was before the Supreme Court for its 
final determination in November of that year. On the 27th (\-.\y of 
which month the Court came to a conclusion, by a majority of five 
to three, Chief Justice Chase presiding, that the .legal-tender act, 
even as a war measure, in its action in time of peace, was beyond 
the constitutional power of Congress. Upon the recommendation 
of the Department of Justice, of which you were the chief, Con 
gress had passed an act (April 10, 18G9), to take effect on the first 
Monday of December, that there should be appointed an additional 



29 



judge. The Court had postponed the announcement of their deci- 
sion of November 27, 1869, as to the constitutionality of the legal- 
tender act until the seventh day of February, 1870, in order to give 
time to write up their opinions. 

It was the duty of the Attorney-General, as head of the Depart- 
ment of Justice, to advise the President as to the appointment of 
judges of the Supreme Court. The President was so advised 
that you, yourself, the Attorxey-General, were nominated on 
the 11th of December, 18G9, to that seat so created. You had 
already made a decision in favor of the constitutionality of the legal- 
tender act in what was known as the " Essex Company Cases" 
when on the bench of Massachusetts, as well as in the case of 
Davis and Parker. 

On the day after }-ou were nominated — to wit, the loth da} T of 
December — Judge Grier resigned his seat on the Supreme Bench, 
to take effect on the 1st day of February, 1870. On the 20th day 
of December, the President, on the recommendation, it is to be pre- 
sumed, of the Department of Justice, nominated Secretary Stanton 
to the vacancy to be created by the resignation of Mr. Justice 
Grier. Secretary Stanton's views on the question of the constitu- 
tionality of the legal-tender act were as well known as j'our own ; 
but, to the grief of all, he died some four days after his nomination. 
Meanwhile the decision of the Supreme Court on the constitution- 
ality of the legal-tender act had become known, and was commented 
on in the public press, — the opinion of Mr. Justice Grier having 
been directed by the Court to be read on the 29th of Januarj', 
before his resignation took effect on the 1st of February. On the 
third day of Februar}-, your nomination, as I have before stated, 
was quite unanimously rejected by the Senate. If Stanton had 
lived and 3-ou had been confirmed, then you would thus have added 
two judges to the bench to make a majority to reverse the 
decision against the constitutional^ of the legal-tender act. 
You know, without my telling you, how much your conduct 
in regard to this decision of the Court affected the judg- 
ment of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate upon your 
case. The opinions of the Court were read on the 7th day 
of February. On the 8th day of February, it appears by 
the record of the Senate, being cabinet da}-, you advised the 
nomination of two judges who had already formed and given 
legal opinions in favor of the constitutionality of the legal- 



30 

tender act. It was not the fault of these gentlemen that they 
were thus put upon the Court to make a given decision, be- 
cause they knew nothing of the purpose ; but, bj- your action, 
the majority of the Court was changed so that they would stand 
five to four upon that question, as they afterwards, upon a rcargu- 
mentof it, did stand. You had tried tc call up the original case for 
reargument and reconsideration, but failed. Having thus packed 
the Court on your side of the question, you applied to the Court to 
bring forward two other cases for argument, which application 
was granted, so that the question whether greenbacks were money 
-was broughl before a Court to which j'ou had added two judges 
who had formed and expressed an opinion favorable to your side 
of the case. What would you say of me, if in one of my cases I 
had used official power to put jurors on the panel whom I knew had 
formed and expressed an (pinion in favor of my client's case? Is 
it any better because the Attorney-* teneral does the same thing in 
behalf of the government? The jurors would not be to blame if 
they did not know why they were put on the jury, as did not the 
judges in this ease. I do not speak of the decision, whether right 
or wrong. Of course, the decision was your way. By your 
action, and yours alone, as the head of the Department of Justice, 
in advising the President, the Court was packed with a majority of 
judges to determine one way a great constitutional question and 
reverse a solemn decision already made. 

Von now claim to be in favor of the immediate resumption of 
specie payments. If you had let the first decision of the Court stand, 
and not taken this extraordinary means to reverse it, which you did, 
the country would have returned to specie payments then and there, 
because we should have had no other constitutional money, the green. 
bade having been declared no longer to be money, or legal tender for 
debts, and we should have had no money but gold and silver. You 
think such a return to specie payments desirable. To that you alone 
were the obstructionist. It is jour action alone which prevented a 
resumption of specie payments more than six years ago, which you 
think now so vital, ••affecting the industry, the wages, the prop- 
erty, the prosperity of every member of the community." I quote 
from your letter. Why, then, did you not let the resumption of 
specie payments alone when - it had come by 'the action of the 
Supreme Court of the United States? 

If the resumption of specie payments will do all you claim for it, 



31 



what mischief }'0U have done by preventing it, and how? By 
packing, with judges whom 3-011 knew would decide the question in 
3'our favor, the Supreme Court of the United States, — an act of 
political corruption, and fraught with dangers greater than any 
other which has ever occurred in the histoiy of the nation. 

Following your teaching, what shall prevent the Democratic 
party, if they can get in power, from creating additional judgeships, 
to which the judges can be appointed by President Tilden, con- 
firmed by the Senate, who will make a majority of the Court, to 
decide that every act of the government by which the rebellion 
was suppressed, b}* which the rebel debt was repudiated, and by 
which payment for slaves was inhibited, are unconstitutional and 
void? You taught the Democratic part}' that lesson. You set 
them the example. You shew them that trick, and I doubt not 
they will profit b} T 3-our teaching and 3-0111' example. 

Judge Hoar, if I ever do anything so terribby mischievous to the 
institutions of ny county as this, I will hide 1113" head in shame, 
and never again let it be seen among men, lest I should be pointed 
at as one who has polluted the courts of justice in the highest 
Court of his country. 

I wish, for 3'our sake, and the sake of Massachusetts, I could 
stop here ; but justice requires still further illumination of 3-our 
record. Having done what 3-011 had done, and resorted to the 
demoralizing proceeding 3-011 ' had to secure a judgment of the 
Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the constitu- 
tional^' of the legal-tender act, and to have the greenback sus- 
tained as the true and constitutional mone3-, and to prevent an 
immediate resumption of specie pa3 - ments. — you were elected as a 
representative to Congress from the Seventh District, and there in 
3-our place made a motion that the resumption of specie pa3 T ments 
should take place on the first da^- of September, 1874, or in less 
than five months, which motion, when amended to the fourth da3* of 
July, 1S7G, hardly obtained twenty votes in a house composed of a 
two-thirds majorit3' of 3-our part3' friends. But, wonderful to relate ! 
in advocating that motion, 3-011 made an argument that greenbacks 
were not money, — the veiy greenback monc3 r which 3-ou had caused 
to be decided to be mone3' and legal tender, even by debauching the 
course of justice in the highest court of the land. 

I give 3-our words from the Congressional Record : — 



32 

" Vol. 2, Part 3, 43d Congress. 

" April 9, 1874. 
"I have no time or inclination to discuss with any gentleman 
the question whether whatever the government chooses to call 
money is mpney ; whether by putting a government stamp upon a 
piece of paper you can make it money. I believe that you might 
just as well say that j - ou make a man an honest or sensible man 
by giving him a certificate that he is elected to Congress." 

Can political tergiversation, — can corruption in "method of 
political procedure," — can tampering with the judiciary of the 
country, — can playing, as if with dice, with great interests and 
great constitutional questions, — can undermining and sapping the 
very foundations of all our liberties and rights by interference with 
the course of justice in the Supreme Court — further go? 

I grieve that I am obliged to make these disclosures. I would I 
were permitted to draw a veil over them and blot them out from 
the record forever ; but it is impossible. They stand there written 
in letters of light for the condemnation of every true, patriotic and 
right-thinking man. 

1 submit this record of yourf to the judgment of the people 
and of your peers in the profession of the law. I submit it to the 
learned judges, your brothers upon the bench in the several courts 
of the Union, and ask, with all the solemnity the gravity of the act 
demands, what ought to be done to the man who has thus pulled 
down the main pillar which supports the fabric of the government, 
the trust and credit which all men ought to give to the decisions of 
the highest judicial tribunal of the United States? 

My sense of right and propriety of conduct may not be too 
keen. Of that others must judge. But I thank God I can go to 
m}' pillow, as I am about doing, as I finish this communication to 
you, without the stain of such an act upon my conscience. 

I have the honor to subscribe myself, 
Very respectfully, 

Your friend and servant, 

BENJ. F. BUTLER. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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